I really don't like the default gvim configuration in Red Hat 9 or Fedora Core.
It defaults to a white background which I don't like.
Also it defaults to an antialiased font which I don't like either.

Automatically setting the background colour or font in gvim is not simple unfortunately.

The font selection is complicated by the recent introduction of xft which gtk2 uses by default.
Therefore to set the font one does this in ~/.gvimrc

if has("gui_gtk2") set guifont=MiscFixed\ 10 else set guifont=-misc-fixed-medium-r-normal--10-100-75-75-c-60-iso8859-1 endif

The colours in vim are controlled by syntax highlighting,
so to set a black background one does:

"Note background set to dark in .vimrc highlight Normal guifg=gray guibg=black

Also for gvim one can't disable the use of bold text in syntax highlighting, so I've added a function
from Steve Hall to my ~/.gvimrc to automatically strip the bold attributes from the current syntax
highlighting definitions.

Here are before and after screenshots on Red Hat 9.
Here are before and after screenshots on Fedora Core 1.

Here are my complete ~/.vimrc and ~/.gvimrc files.